What I See
by redcharcoal
Summary: Minerva has many doubts. Hermione doesn't. A/N: This isn't a sexy story although there is sex. It's an honest story about doubt and fear and aging, all the things MM would feel awful angst over. Everyone is WELL over 18. (Some far more than others, much to Minerva's chagrin). This is a pairing I never thought I'd write but a friend gave me a prompt and, well, begged. My first HP.


"I'm old, Miss Granger," Minerva McGonagall said with a dissatisfied huff. "Excessively, miserably, unappealingly old."

"_Hermione_," her former student corrected. "It's been ten years since you were my professor - as you well know." She gave her an indulgent smile. This was not their first 'chat' on the subject. Not the first time her former professor had lapsed into formal titles, either.

"Be that as it may," Minerva continued almost tartly, "Look at this. What do you see?" She held up her hand, pointing to its imperfections, liver spots and signs of wear. "Much too old for ..." She didn't finish the sentence. She usually never did. She would leave it hanging like the ethereal tinkle of distant wind chimes. Mournful but just out of reach.

"I could offer some appropriate platitude here," Hermione suggested quietly. "Point out you're only as old as you feel, that you're not _that_ old since witches age more slowly. But that's not what bothers you, is it?"

Minerva's eyes, creased and weary, fluttered closed. "No."

"No," Hermione repeated kindly. "The aches and pains you try to hide sometimes bother you; the rheumatism in joints that you take your potions for bother you, but not how old you are. Because it's not your age that worries you. It's _my_ age. After all, I'm..."

"Don't say it," Minerva swallowed painfully. "I am well aware."

"Yes, you are," Hermione said sadly. "You see the number 27 every time you look at me. I wish you could only see me but _that's_ what you see."

Minerva lifted her hand again, studying the care-worn skin. "I suspect it shall always be so, dear. How can it not? It's not 'just' numbers. It's what they represent. And not just the age disparity. Even your vaunted intellect knows what I'm saying."

Hermione waited for her mentor to finish her thought.

Minerva's voice was barely a husk now: "One step nearer to dying. Or infirmity."

"Everyone dies, Minerva," Hermione said. "We're all dying. Slowly but surely. Why fixate on where you are along the spectrum of life and death?"

"You know why."

The headmistress finally lowered the hand she had been studying and floated it down to Hermione's bare thigh. She moved it, nestling it gently between her lover's legs. "Watch," she said, and teased her fingers forward. They were slightly twisted with age and Hermione knew her knuckles sometimes swelled painfully whenever the line of plane trees outside her London apartment shuddered with the onset of winter's winds.

The soft pads of Minerva's fingers eased apart Hermione's delicate pink lips, dusted in coarse whorls of hair, and they both watched as two fingers languidly slid inside. They came out instantly slick, evidence of the younger witch's arousal.

Hermione has been in an almost embarrassing state of need ever since Minerva had kissed her feverishly against her bedroom wall an hour ago. But this was becoming a pattern with Minerva. Impetuous advances, doubt, then love. Rinse, repeat.

They were apparently stuck on doubt.

"Do you see?" Minerva asked her voice dropping to a Scottish burr, eyes half lidded. "The oddness of it. Old worn hands slipping into young, beautiful flesh." She pumped a little faster as they both mutely observed the slippery evidence of what Hogwarts' ordinarily proper headmistress was so proficiently doing. Wet sounds filled the room and Hermione's nipples hardened instantly, her breath beginning to come in heaving gulps.

"Oh please," she whispered, "Ohh Minerva." Her head tilted back.

A thumb twisted up and nudged then circled Hermione's peeking clitoris, just the way that always made her insides flutter.

"Do you see?" Minerva implored again, even softer, the aging fingers twisting and stroking. "This is _absurd_," she suggested, her tone not quite as convinced as her words. "Ridiculous," she tried again, even as her voice cracked and her breath caught at the sight before her. "Oh. _Hermione_. Oh. We should not..."

"Ohh, oh, oh, yes, there," Hermione began to gasp. Her fingers curled tightly around her lover's bare shoulders, pressing little half-moon crescents into the pale skin. "Oh, yes."

Minerva skidded her fingers lightly over the spot inside that Hermione loved the most and then leaned forward, capturing an erect, pert nipple between her lips. She worried it with her tongue and teeth, nibbling and teasing expertly until Hermione's whole body began to stiffen.

Dark, brooding green eyes watched, her desire naked and burning. The younger woman arched beneath her, trembling for an eternity, twitching right at the edge, then cried out in delight.

Hermione slumped back and cracked her eyes open. Minerva slipped her fingers from her core and delicately licked them. It was the most cat-like she ever looked in her non-animagus form and it made the younger witch smile.

She rolled over onto her side and studied her unpredictable, decades-older lover, propping her head up with one hand. "Minerva?" she said, waiting until those stormy eyes fixed on hers. "You are an incredible woman who makes me feel more than anyone ever has. You are my mentor, my inspiration, my intellectual match, my heart. I would be insane not to welcome you into my life, my soul, and my bed every chance I get. Age - a number on a page - will never change that. And it never will."

She leaned forward and kissed the wet fingers that had just brought her so much pleasure. "Don't fight it. Us. Please. Life's too short. We both know that. We've both lost too many we love."

"But darling..."

"No." Hermione nuzzled the hand that had touched her and loved her and comforted her so well, so often over the three years of their secret relationship. "You are beating up the one person I love most, and with so much self-loathing it's frightening. You deserve to be happy. We are hurting no one. It is all right to stop feeling so ashamed."

"If only it were so easy, my dear." Minerva lifted her hand again, studying its back as one might examine a particularly dissatisfying spell. The light picked up the color variations and she frowned. Hermione caught the fingers and kissed them, covering her lips over the lines and the spots, worshiping the wealth of experience they represented. These were hands that had helped defeat the Dark One and its agents across three wars with blistering, lethal skill, and they belonged to a woman who had fearlessly put her life on the line for her students countless times. The irony that she was now so filled with fear over just one woman was not lost on Hermione.

She rolled onto Minerva, pressing breast to breast, belly to belly, and began to slowly, purposefully kiss every wrinkle or sign of age she could find. They were all a part of this formidable person. All part of the woman she cared for more than life itself. She loved each and every bit of her.

"Minerva," she said firmly, "What _I_ see when I look at us together is just one thing: I see your love, Min. _That's_ what I see. And that's all that matters."

The older witch smiled then, a hesitant curl of lips that said they'd be revisiting this topic the next time Minerva was mired in insecurities and doubts. But for now, it was enough. Just enough.

"Yes," she whispered and kissed Hermione, gathering her tightly in her arms. "Yes, my love. Yes."


End file.
